Chuck Norris, who channeled his skills as a martial arts black belt into a durable acting career that left film crities largely unimpressed but delighted millions of fans savoring his good-guy triumphs and fortune-cookie musings, died on Thursday. He was 86.
His death was announced by his family through his official Instagram account, but no further details were immediately available. He was hospitalized earlier that day in Hawaii after experiencing a medical emergency, the family said.
As an actor, Mr. Norris was well aware that no one would mistake him for a latter-day Laurence Olivier. In most of his films and in “Walker, Texas Ranger,” a CBS television series that ran from 1993 to 2001, he played a warrior who comes to the rescue not with words or guns but rather with spinning back kicks and other techniques that had made him a leading martial-arts practitioner.
